MAKING A DIFFERENCE Pat Park, president/CEO of Prudential Dunn Realtors on Cass St., has directed a firm that has changed with the times in the real-estate industry over the last 36 years.Courtesy photo

Prudential Dunn Realtors, an independently owned and operated broker, has been serving the beach and inland communities for 40 years.

President/CEO Patrick J. Park, who’s operated the firm for 36 years at 4538 Cass St., said there’s no secret to his success.

“We’ve been fortunate to have had some very good agents and associates through time who sincerely have their clients’ best interests in mind — and that’s what it’s all about,” said Park. He said a property purchase is “the largest asset in people’s lives in most cases.”

Prudential Dunn Realtors specializes in residential, investment and commercial properties, including lots and land. With about 50 agents countywide, the firm’s listing base varies from waterfront properties to vacant land, including some of San Diego’s larger estates. The firm is a member of Prudential Relocation Services (PRS), one of the largest international relocation networks, and can also draw on the expertise of in-house Prudential Financial, a division of Wells Fargo Advisors & Liberty Mutual Insurance representatives.

Park said his real-estate firm has changed with the times, which he said have changed dramatically.

“The industry as a whole is a lot more time-sensitive than it used to be,” he said, pointing out that’s partly because, “people in the millennium generation and other generations want answers very quickly. You need to get it (information) to them on mobile apps or whatever.”

Like many other industries, the Internet has revolutionized how real-estate companies do business.

“Being online has become so critical because you really don’t know where your buyer is coming from,” said Park. The market, he said, has become increasingly more international, drawing prospective buyers from around the globe for San Diego properties.

Citing one recent example, Park said a fixer-upper in La Jolla that sold for well above the property’s estimated value range drew offers from China, Canada and Mexico before being sold to a Texas real-estate broker.

Value-range pricing was hailed by Park as a key to the continuing success of county real-estate sales.

“Prudential brought value-range pricing to this country from Australia in a market that was not doing well,” Park said. He added that listing property in a range — rather than as a flat rate — allows “wider exposure with respect to those listings.”

Park offered an example as illustration.

“If you have a condo listed at a fixed price of $501,000, anybody looking up to $500,000 is not going to see your condo,” he said. “But if it’s value-ranged at $475,000 to $525,000, you’re going to pick up somebody looking in that range. It’s a very good feature of the San Diego city and county markets and throughout Southern California.”

Real-estate prices are rebounding nicely from the downturn of a few years ago, Park said.

“What we’ve seen in the past year or two are that prices are recovering,” he said. “As an example, our average sale price last year was in the mid-$400,000s,” he said. “This year, the average has been more than $550,000, though not for the same properties.”

Park speculated San Diego’s notoriously nice weather — and bad weather elsewhere — may have something to do with escalating San Diego real-estate values.

“It shows that San Diego is still America’s finest city in every way, shape or form,” Park said.